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Mantic Posts Deadzone 2nd Edition Details

It’s just all about the new editions lately, hasn’t it? Not to say that the games were bad in their older versions, but sometimes you just need to update things. Well, Mantic has started taking pre-orders for Deadzone 2 (Dead Harder). But what sort of things have changed from the original edition? That’s just what they’re answering in this preview.

Starting out, your forces will be built differently. They are allowing much more freedom in builds. They’re also encouraging conversions and kit-bashing. Since many of the new options don’t have models (and may not for quite a long time), Mantic is saying go ahead and put together what you can. Along with that, the rules for leaders have been changed to make it so they’re a much more defining part of your force. Their abilities and rules will sort of help guide armies to work certain ways, giving you more thematic options.

Next up is that the battle cards are being removed from the game. Instead, you’ll get command dice. The decision was based on not wanting to make people always need to buy more cards. Also, a lot of the cards simply countered other cards, which meant much of the time they didn’t end up really doing anything. The dice give you more of a way to affect the game.

They’re also revamping the league system. At the start of a new campaign, you’ll basically build up a really huge strike force, from which you’ll use only a portion of it each game. Each model will be considered unique, and will thus have their stats tracked over the course of the league, letting your entire group grow and change as you play through.

As I mentioned, pre-orders are available now for the new edition over in the Mantic webshop.

I was born at a very young age. I plan on living forever. So far, so good.

crazytuco

Well, while it seems like this is pretty soon for a new edition, I held off on this game based on the fact that the force I liked the look of the most, the Rebs, seemed to be seen unanimously as terribly underpowered compared to other factions. Hopefully they address the balance between forces.

I love skirmish style games like GW’s much lamented Necromunda and Mordheim where I build a force and fight through a campaign and build up my models. If I hear good things about this second edition I’d surely give it a go.

Jared Swenson

@crazytuco:disqus While it is too early in this edition to tell the real meta, it is pretty well agreed that Rebs are better. We don’t know how good they will be, but they appear to be better. One of the issues in the previous edition was their missions, and in this edition everyone has the same secret mission tables they roll on. I can tell you from experience that my Forge Fathers are not a stompy as they used to be, mainly because everything in my list is so expensive, but for the most part on the Rebs end it appears that the devs abandoned the idea that they were supposed to be the ‘challenging’ faction and tried bringing them in line with the others. Again though, it is too early to see what the meta will be like in this edition.